While attending Mony Pleasant High School in Schenectady, NY, I was oblivious to the circumstances surrounding the death of one of my classmates over the summer break between my sophomore and junior years. Yesterday, during my mini-reunion with Cathy Conway and Tom Metzold, I learned a few details which motivated me to research the full story.

On July 22, 1974, 16-year-old, Susan Carmel Zanta went missing. She was on summer vacation staying with a friend’s family at their Cossayuna Lake cottage in Argyle, NY. Her friend’s boyfriend was visiting and she did not want to be a third wheel so went out for a walk from which she never returned. Police dragged the lake and searched nearby woods. Eight days later, a farmer looking for a stray cow found her body in a cornfield. She had been beaten, raped, and hit on the head with a rock. This is the information that I learned yesterday. As tragic as it is, the rest of the story only gets worse.

On July 25, 1974, police took Kenneth Arnold Yarter, a 23-year-old, 6’ 1” tall waiter into custody for questioning because he had been seen with Susan on the day before she was reported missing. He consented to a polygraph which concluded he had knowledge of Susan’s whereabouts. He then underwent further interrogation throughout the night during which time he claimed he was physically coerced into confessing to the murder and rape.

In 1977, the NY State Court of Appeals, overturned his conviction, ruling that his confession to the murder was obtained through duress and he was subsequently released.

In 1980, Yarter was convicted of kidnapping in connection with a rape in Pohapcong, NJ, and of rape in Easton, PA.

On July 19, 1991, with 5-10 years still left on his sentence, he was accidentally released from a New Jersey correction facility when the institution switched from a manual to a computerized record-keeping system.  The error was discovered and reported by Susan’s mother who had been diligently keeping tabs on her daughter’s rapist and killer.

Yarter then traveled to Florida where he told a fellow tourist that he had killed a girl in New York but escaped punishment because police had tortured him. That fellow tourist turned out to be a British police officer, who reported the statement to authorities. At about the same time, in mid-August, 1991, St. Petersburg Beach police determined that Yarter had held two 18-year-old female Canadian tourists captive for nine hours, alternately raping them. They issued a warrant for his arrest on charges of kidnapping, rape, and robbery. Yarter fled to Las Vegas where he was apprehended a couple of days later.

After being sentenced to 50 years in the St. Petersburg Beach rape case, Yarter was returned to Nevada to continue serving sentences for various crimes there and in Pennsylvania.

In December 1995, he was extradited to New York to be tried for the rape and murder of Susan Zanta. 

In September 1996, Yarter agreed to plead guilty to second-degree murder in Zanta’s death and was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. He is currently incarcerated in the medium-security Dade Correctional Institution in Florida City, FL with the earliest possible release date in 2026.